


Inhabited By A Cry

by Rue_River_Styx



Series: Disenchanted Dystopians [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alice in Wonderland References, Alternate Universe - Ancient Greek Religion & Lore Fusion, Angst and Feels, Anonymity, Anxiety, Attempt at Humor, Blogging, Confessions, Dark Comedy, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dead Poets Society - Freeform, Depression, Emotional Hurt, Essays, Fear, Good Writing, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Literary References & Allusions, Literary Theory, Loneliness, Love Poems, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Movie Reference, Mythology References, Philosophy, Poetic, Poetry, Questioning, Sylvia Plath - Freeform, Weapons of Sorrow, Writers, henry david thoreau - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-19 05:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22272292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rue_River_Styx/pseuds/Rue_River_Styx
Summary: I am murdered by my own hands, my own weapons because, while I seek to use them on others, only end-up injuring myself instead. It is unfortunate and yet fortunate I lack untouchable power named talent that demigods possess, for I would surely not be able to crawl out after these ruthless attacks. Then again, maybe my talent is having no talent at all, therefore unable to touch anyone’s life, unable to evolve, to grow from a weed to a flower, stuck in my original form, a dead leaf halfheartedly grasping onto an elm’s branch, wanting to believe I am worthy and a vital piece of its beauty.
Series: Disenchanted Dystopians [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588915
Kudos: 1





	Inhabited By A Cry

“I am inhabited by a cry,

Nightly it flaps out

Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing

That sleeps in me;

All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, like malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.

Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?

Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.

What is this, this face

So murderous in its strangle of branches?

It’s snaky acids hiss.

It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults

That kill, that kill, that kill.”

_Elm,_ by Sylvia Plath

I have come to see that I am murdered trice in a single day—the first upon awakening, waking to no routine and no stability within my poor mind. The second murder occurs halfway throughout the day when my severe sense of time passing by stabs a glass shard through my chest repeatedly, repeatedly. The final killing in this murder series happens when the long, but terribly short day “ends,” so to go by the human concept of time. I am murdered by my own hands, my own weapons because, while I seek to use them on others, only end-up injuring myself instead. It is unfortunate and yet fortunate I lack untouchable power named talent that demigods possess, for I would surely not be able to crawl out after these ruthless attacks. Then again, maybe my talent is having no talent at all, therefore unable to touch anyone’s life, unable to evolve, to grow from a weed to a flower, stuck in my original form, a dead leaf halfheartedly grasping onto an elm’s branch, wanting to believe I am worthy and a vital piece of its beauty.

After the first two early decades, an elm begins to wonder if there is anything more than a struggling leaf in the cusp of life’s winter.

No poet can grasp the depth of another poet’s work; they understand more than your common man, rest assured, but a great uncertainty that petrifies our will is the realization that your work will never have as much meaning to another as it does to your own soul. Who can say where Sylvia was, where her mind was when she scribbled out Elm for me to read today? Who can say aside myself, who can tell my own story better than I? But I do not know if there is a point for all these questions. Knowing understanding will be misinterpreted, partially knowing it will, at the very least, stir some similar emotions within the reader, do I dare waste my precious “time” in explaining my mind at all? Oh, I am that elm branch, standing in whipping winds and wondering how deep my love for dispersing clouds stretches, hanging on by a thread, constantly wondering why darkness must always consume and never give. Disorganized thinking can never be sorted by category, you see, and that is why us poets write: there is no telling when that particular ideal or epiphany will show itself again, and we must document as accurately as our purpose allows in hopes—

In hopes. That is all.

Oh friends, I hope my maniac writing does not upset your fluttering minds…hopefully if you are a loyal reader you will have already understood that I write not to demean or blame, but just to escape the confides of my own troublesome mind. For only shedding tears during sorrow-induced episodes, I wail and cry out often, only, no one but you, my friends, hear. If only reaching out was as easy as it is to say. If only scribbling out enchanting yet haunting verses like _Elm_ was easy to write, easy to reveal without being judged. I wonder about popularity and its definition. Great demigods and heroes were well known through legends and stories, only to die with no lasting friendships, no surviving relationships and only a mere memory of the gold glory they seek. Are cries for love more memorable, I wonder, because of their severity in feeling, which humans do not know they pursue? As for me, I cherish murderous, dark, terrible fairytales more than happy ones, so long as a comedic mix is intertwined. Morbid humor is underrated! Will this series of essays be popular, I wonder, perhaps in collection form after your mysterious narrator has become well-known in our underground, other-worldly universe?

Returning to our topic of discussion: nothing. We who know we know absolutely nothing confess our sins to nobody, to everyone, to ourselves at every waking moment. Because poets know nothing, we can carry no more knowledge, as we know everything dark. A just man does not exist. He cannot, with the presence of others, ever become what he desires so long as he cares more for mankind than for ideas, beauty, philosophy, colors and sounds. Recently I have begun wondering how others can even dare to live their existence doing anything but creating, sketching, observing, making—how could anyone survive that way? Sylvia, the dead poets and I are the only ones who understand that politics, industries, organizations are useless, know that mankind cannot live together because no matter in what religion or spirituality you practice, life started with one lonely man, and one lonely man is how we will all live and die. Isolation we crave because isolation we are.

Into faults we fall immediately, envying without knowing why, working without asking why, committing without wondering why—only poets see that these faults have been since the beginning, not simply created out of thin air over society’s time. Pain and longing for isolation has always been our major fault, and that is no secret. Desperation for companionship has caused marriage. Desperation for a common interest has caused children. All this desperation, pointing to filling a void in one’s heart, causes the very core of what I like to call conformity. If every man was isolated, if only for a short amount of time, the world would never be lonely again. Sylvia would never be lonely again. I would never be lonely again. Today we must ask, then: why do clouds disperse, and why do we love them even more knowing we will never see them again?

Henry David Thoreau was the first of us to test his theory of self-dependence and isolation in _Walden_. For two happy years he lived apart from society and out of that experiment came a marvelous book that soothes introverted souls with talks of quiet winters, pretty autumns and blooming springs, summers so warm in spirit your soul could melt from peace. Self-reliance is not near as much an important topic as it should be. Thousands of times I ask myself, despite my desperation for conversations I cannot carry alone, if I am better off alone with my ever-changing thoughts and possible other voices bouncing between my brain stems. Us lonely souls have depended on ourselves _too_ much, I have observed, to a point where asking for help has been warped into a daunting idea; but isn’t it? Bringing attention to the fact that you cannot perform something? Maybe we are of a different breed. Maybe, however, we are what society should be like, doing our own work, observing every detail of our lives and the lives of others to do our best in reacting. Elm trees grow entirely on their own, without help from anyone; their branches, however, need much help, which is why I am so desperate to grow into a small elm tree, if only so I can stand alone without feeling alone. Are you starting to wonder where I am going with this article? Who knows. Sylvia can tell us when we meet her.

I used this very poem in a novel I am attempting to write (much of my mania and pain today derives from being unable to find time for these things in which we survive for), focusing on the phrase “ _I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me; all day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, like malignity_.” Although much of my writings focus on aesthetically sad boys, I feel as if this is the first time in a while I am truly expressing mental illness in a blunt, straight-forward way without any fear of being judged for it, because I now know (don’t ask how, for even I am unaware) there are enough of us branches in the world who will appreciate my effort. I know, now, that many of us are inhabited by cries. Many of us keep those cries contained, sheltered, guarded, a large portion still lost in the dark and thinking they are the only individuals kept mute by their own self-doubt. Returning back to self-reliance, I can admit that we are all lowly branches wishing we were elm trees in a large cluster. Because we are admit to being nothing, I believe that makes us everything, the clouds above, don’t you?

Personally, I adore clouds. We share special moments every waking moment as I watch them run off into the gray or blue sky. Just between the two of us, we love at first sight, have our hearts broken, then observe quietly, bittersweet hearts becoming more sweet than bitter as pale faces drift off into better places, unable to be retrieved for fear of repeating loves. Love should not be multiplied, I believe—it should be created every second of every day in different colored clouds, glistening snowflakes rare in every aspect, ice cold raindrops smashing against white skin and affecting our cries in ways only _we_ can comprehend. As I write this sentence I am now strangely comforted by the suffering of my fellow dead poets—since I will one day join them (hopefully by no fault of my own), I hope that will be the day I finally develop an understanding, mutual friendship.

I hope. Until them, I am inhabited by a cry, looking, with my brand-new but still rusty hooks, for something to love.

Yours,

_self loathing poet_

**QOTD** :

Which do you (honestly) feel more desire for?

_Self-reliance_ or _Isolation_

**Next Entry** : _“Fates Worth Than Death"_


End file.
